Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman
First, as far as the two Republican senator are concerned:
"Collins, who voted to confirm Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, said in a May 3 statement: “If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.”
"Murkowski, who had backed Gorsuch and Barrett, told NBC News: “If the decision is going the way that the draft that has been revealed is actually the case, it was not—it was not the direction that I believed that the court would take based on statements that have been made about Roe being settled and being precedent.”
The judges as nominees:
"Gorsuch: Senator, again, I would tell you that Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, is a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed. The reliance interest considerations are important there, and all of the other factors that go into analyzing precedent have to be considered. It is a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was reaffirmed in Casey in 1992 and in several other cases. So a good judge will consider it as precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other."
Gorsuch: "the Supreme Court of the United States has held in Roe v. Wade that a fetus is not a person for purposes of the 14th Amendment, and the book explains that.
Durbin: Do you accept that?
Gorsuch: "That is the law of the land. I accept the law of the land, senator, yes."
"Kavanaugh avoided answering whether Roe v. Wade was correctly decided, or how he might rule in a future case challenging that court ruling. Instead, Kavanaugh repeatedly said that Roe v. Wade was “settled as precedent.”
Feinstein brought up news reports that Kavanaugh told Collins in an August 2018 private meeting that Roe v. Wade was “settled law.” When Feinstein asked Kavanaugh to explain what he meant by that, he said:
Kavanaugh: "Senator, I said that it is settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court, entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis. " "And one of the important things to keep in mind about Roe v. Wade is that it has been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years, as you know, and most prominently, most importantly, reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992."
"And as you well recall, senator, I know when that case came up, the Supreme Court did not just reaffirm it in passing. The court specifically went through all the factors of stare decisis in considering whether to overrule it, and the joint opinion of Justice Kennedy, Justice O’Connor and Justice Souter, at great length went through those factors. That was the question presented in the case."
Barrett: Of the above two, the handmaiden knew how to keep the starch in her skirt: "Barrett said that if a question about overturning Roe or Casey or any other case comes before her, “I will follow the law of stare decisis, applying it as the court is articulating it, applying all the factors, reliance, workability, being undermined by later facts in law, just all the standard factors. And I promise to do that for any issue that comes up, abortion or anything else. I’ll follow the law.”
I think everybody knew what Barrett's agenda was after hearing that...
I'm not sure what your point is. Everyone knew that Trump was going to appoint conservative justices. The justices were evasive and non-committal during the confirmation hearings. That is sadly the way the confirmation game must be played, since the D's shamefully attacked Bork, Thomas, and most recently Kavanaugh. The liberal nominees do it too. No justice lied, according to at least me and the Annenberg Public Policy Center. So, what is your point?
I highlighted the quote above, because I think you will find, if you read the last couple of years of my posts, that I too predicted that the Trump justices would
not vote to overturn Roe, because of precedent and because of the social upheaval this would cause.
I was wrong (probably). Same as Murkowski and Collins. I am not shocked, stunned, disappointed or dismayed though! Neither are Murkowski and Collins in my guess. They are saying they are because they are pro-choice Republicans who have now voted to confirm the justices who possibly killed Roe. Unlike me, Collins and Murkowski have to worry about their constituents and their constituent's votes. I suppose this puts them in a hard spot, but there is no way the (probable) rejection of Roe literally shocked either of them!
And if it did, so what? The nominees did not lie and they were carefully, but appropriately evasive, as shown in your Fact Check. Jim
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